Ahhhhhh. . .back to the frivolous posts! The election is over, and the post-mortem is not nearly as urgent. We'll be dissecting it for months. So, it's time for something a little more fun.
One of my favorite shows of all time is
Bewitched, which ran from 1964 (two years before I was born) to 1972 (when I was just old enough to watch). I grew up with the prime-time
second Darrin, Dick Sargent. But it was a few more years before I figured out there was an entirely different actor, Dick York, playing him in the morning re-runs!
The show, if you are too young to remember (and wisely avoided the "remake/re-imagining" movie with Will Farrell), was a "high concept" sitcom, with a happily married young couple, where the wife just happens to be a witch. The 60s were full of high concepts, from monster families, to genies to Martians. But I think
Bewitched managed to be equal parts natural and
supernatural. It was certainly the most successful of the lot, lasting eight seasons. Elizabeth Montgomery as witchy Samantha was an oddity for the time, a beautiful but
intelligent housewife. And while the "lord of the manor" air of Darrin the husband--forbidding his wife to do witchcraft--was tempered by the fact that she ignored him, and humored him most of the time.
I've had the DVD collections of seasons 1 and 2 for quite some time, and have watched most of them. There was something a little sweeter, and a little less madcap about the early seasons, though the (very good) colorization helps bring them closer in tone to the rest of the series. I recently noticed that they're all the way to season 6 in releases, and pondered buying that season--the first with Sargent--until I saw it at the library today. I just sat down to watch the first disc of five or six episodes, and had a great time doing so.
The quality of classic sitcoms is colored greatly by nostalgia. As much as I continue to love the series, much of the luster has worn off of
Bewitched. At least by the sixth season's episodes that is. There are great things in there, don't get me wrong. Agnes Moorehead was still
excellent as wicked witch Endora, Sargent did an OK job of filling in as Darrin (with a similar silly-putty face), and Erin Murphy was adorable as little Tabitha. The main problem was the fact that they started recycling scripts from earlier seasons. I don't think I've seen one episode from this batch that isn't a remake or a rewrite.
Back then, they probably didn't think anyone would notice. There were far fewer places to find the show then, if any at all. So, episodes that featured dotty Aunt Clara (the fantastic Marion Lorne, who had passed away) were rewritten to feature dotty Esmerelda (the equally fantastic Alice Ghostley). Baby storylines about Tabitha were rewritten to feature baby Adam. If they hadn't gone that route, I think the series would have been better toward the end.
But I still love it. Montgomery was enchantingly good in her role, and there is just something about the music, the animated opening, the Morning Glory Circle house (outside facade, and interior set) that just makes me happy. That said, it's terribly sad how people in the cast seemed to die with regularity.
Other programs from the era still have most of their casts alive and intact, or at least did until recently. But the cast of
Bewitched lost cast members while it was still on the air (Lorne, and Alice Pierce as the first Mrs Kravitz), some shortly after (Moorehead), and most of the rest in the eighties and nineties (Montgomery, York, Sargent, Maurice Evans, David White as Larry Tate and Paul Lynde as Uncle Arthur). I think the only ones left are Bernard Fox (Dr. Bombay) and the kids who played Tabitha and Adam.
But they do live on in video, and I have to say that the availability of these shows on DVD have sort of fulfilled a childhood dream of mine. I remember missing an episode of
Bewitched when I was little, looking at the TV and thinking,
"they should make it so you can watch them anytime." Now, if I'd only invented the damned DVDs. . .
